


vixi

by procellous



Series: as an apple tree among the trees of the wood | shiro/matt week [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-08-17 06:58:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8134555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procellous/pseuds/procellous
Summary: things you said after the endshatt week day one: departures/reunions





	

i. Matt, it’s me. Shiro. I’m calling you from your grave. Isn’t that funny? I’m standing here, looking at a tombstone that says Matt Holt on it. Matthew Descartes Holt. And I’m calling you. So whenever you want to call off the joke that…that would be nice. Especially if you do it soon. It really—it’s not actually funny. I guess I’m still in shock. You were just here. It doesn’t make sense. Some random guy with a little too much to drink, and now you’re gone. It’s not supposed to be like that, it’s not right. It’s not fair, and I know life isn’t fair but why couldn’t this have been?

ii. Hey Matt. It’s me. Of course it’s me. I’m the only one who calls you anymore, except maybe Pidge. Keith thinks it’s unhealthy. I—I just—I don’t know. It’s not like I’m expecting you to call me back or anything. I wish you would, though. Stop being dead and call me. That…that would be nice. I know it’s impossible, that you’re gone and not coming back and I just want to hear your voice again. I’d give anything to be able to say goodbye properly, to tell you I love you one last time. Did I tell you, before you left? Did I say it? Did you believe it?

iii. You weren’t supposed to die, Matt. It should have been me, it—it should have been me out there that night. I—I—I should have _known_ , and I know I couldn’t have known at the time but there must have been something I could have done differently that would have ended with you alive…I should have delayed you, should have made you stay a little longer, given you another kiss—I should have gone instead. You can’t die before you finish your degree, you _can’t_. You’ve worked so hard, you can’t just die partway through, you aren’t done yet!

iv. Come back. Please, I’d do anything to have you back. I wouldn’t even complain about how you leave your books all over the place. Left. Used to leave. Tenses are harder now. I just—I found one of your biology books, and I cried for an hour. Just—just cardboard and paper and ink and you’re gone and you left without finishing your thesis and you worked so hard on it and I know it annoys you to leave something half-finished—fuck. I did it again. It annoyed you, to leave something half-finished. Past. Past tense. Not present.

v. The apartment is lonely without you. It’s too big for just me and Keith. I snapped at him the other day. He had gotten home right at six and I heard someone come up and I thought it was you, you always come—came—home at six, and then I heard his voice and I remembered that—that—I remembered what happened. That you aren’t here anymore. We’ve been walking on eggshells around each other since then. I should apologize to him for that but I’m not sure how to. “Sorry for snapping at you, I thought you were Matt.” It sounds like I’m losing it. Maybe I am. 

vi. If ghosts were real, would I be able to see you again? Maybe they are real, but you haven’t been—gone. For long enough. Or, or maybe you wanted to move on instead and see what comes after. You always were curious. It seems like something you’d do, just to see what’s out there. Is it nice, where you are? What am I saying, of course it is. You’d deserve it. Can you see what’s happening down here? Can you see how much of a mess my life has become without you in it? I’m not crying anymore, at least, but everything feels…numb. Detached. 

vii. Keith bought your phone. Keeps the number around. I don’t know what I’d do without him. I know he worries about me, and he shouldn’t have to. I’m the older brother, I’m supposed to be taking care of him and not the other way around but…I can’t, right now, I can barely take care of myself. He shouldn’t have to be taking care of me. He has other things he should be thinking about, studying and boys and flying. We heard from the flight school, he’s starting there in the fall. Pidge, too. I’m so proud of them both, and I know you are too.

viii. I keep finding your stuff around the apartment. I should probably box it up and donate it to charity but that would mean admitting you’re never coming back and—I’m not ready. Fuck. I can’t just let you go so easily. I keep thinking that you’ll drive up and open the door and everything will be the way it was before and I can’t, I can’t admit that you won’t I can’t accept that you’ll never, ever come back and God, Matt, I miss you so much it hurts. Hurts more than when I lost my arm, hurts more than anything.

ix. I was going to propose, you know that? I had the ring and everything. Why’d you have to go and fuck all of my plans up by dying? It was never supposed to be like this. Why’d you leave, Matt? Why’d you have to go? I was going to take you to that nice restaurant, you know, the one that we could never have afforded when we were still in school together— I had—I wrote you a speech, all nice and pretty, and I was going to have proposed to you and now you’re gone and you’re—you’re never coming back. 

x. I miss you so much, I miss you more every day. I don’t know how to keep going. When—when my parents died, all I could think of was taking care of Keith but he’s grown up and starting flight school and he doesn’t need me to be okay in the same way anymore. There’s nobody relying on me like that to make me be okay and I can’t—I don’t know how to be okay anymore. I wish you were here, I wish this hadn’t happened. Please stop being dead. Please. Don’t leave me here alone. Come back. _Please_ , Matt, I—

xi. I can’t remember what your laugh sounded like. I thought. I thought I would never forget it but I can’t remember and what if I forget about you too? What if I wake up one day and I can’t remember your voice or your smile? What if I wake up some day and I don’t remember you at all? I can’t stand thinking about it, about falling in love with someone else, but I can’t stop thinking about it. I wish you were still here, I wish I could see you again in something other than photographs. I want to see you laugh one more time.

xii. I’ve been playing your last voicemail to me over and over. I’m trying to memorize how you said _I love you_. That was the last message I have: “I’ll see you soon. I love you.” It’s the only one I have, too, since. Since I deleted the others after I listened to them. Before I knew you wouldn’t be coming back. It was just a trip to the store, why did it end so badly? What were my last words to you? “Can you pick up some milk?” What kind of last words are those? At least it wasn’t—at least we didn’t fight, like in movies. I wish I had told you “I love you.”

xiii. Keith’s making me see a therapist. He thinks—he called it maladaptive, a maladaptive coping mechanism. That I’m hurting myself by doing this. But it’s just you. Talking to you—it doesn’t hurt, when I talk to you. Never has. I’ve been feeling better, more like myself again. I surprised Keith the other day; I tried to make dinner—it didn’t end well, but nothing got set on fire like that one time—we ended up ordering pizza, and we were laughing and joking and. I hadn’t realized that it had been so long since I laughed. A month is a long time to go without laughing.

xiv. We made our lives around each other and now you’re gone and I—do you remember, when you first got your prosthetic, and kept tripping over your feet? It’s like that. I keep expecting you to be there, like I’ll turn a corner and you’ll be there only you’re not and I’m alone again. Or when you’re driving and slam on the breaks only your body is still moving forward and you slam back against the seats. It’s like that. Like you were the only thing holding me up and without you I’m falling. And that’s not fair, it’s not fair to Keith and it’s not fair to either of us but. It’s true.

xv. Does it hurt? Dying, I mean. They said you died instantly. That you didn’t feel any pain. I think they say that to everyone, though, to make them feel better. I mean, no one wants to hear that their boyfriend died in screaming agony. I—I just want to know. If it hurts. I think it must hurt, to be honest. Will I see you again when I die? I hope I do. There’s not much point otherwise, if I never see you again. And everyone says we’ll reunite with our loved ones after we die, so it’s probably true and I’ll be able to see you again.

xvi. Remember how we used to sit on the roof of the school and watch the stars? We kissed for the first time up here. I still remember it. We were waiting for a meteor shower. You leaned forward and kissed me. You were so embarrassed, you were bright red. And then I kissed you back, and that was when the meteor shower started. The Leonid shower, do you remember? It looked like every star in the sky was falling just for us. It was so bright you looked like you were glowing. I remember thinking that your eyes were brighter than all the stars combined.

xvii. I’ll see you soon. I love you.


End file.
